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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Everyone at the WS Society mourns the passing of James Mackay, Lord Mackay of Clashfern KT, aged 99, whose death was announced on Tuesday. Truly a titan of the law and a wonderful man. We send our sincere condolences to Lady Mackay and all her family.

A portrait of James Mackay, Lord Mackay of Clashfern KT in his black and gold embroidered robes as Keeper of the Signet.

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Kit Baston @kgbaston.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Good news, aho! Great news, aho! This was such a fun project to work on: www.wssociety-heritage.co.uk/2026/05/08/c... You can find the Signet Library's Tincklarian Doctor pamphlets here: sign.koha-ptfs.co.uk/cgi-bin/koha... @signetlibrary.bsky.social #IGiveLight

wssociety-heritage.co.uk

Cataloguing the Tincklarian Doctor – The WS Society Heritage Portal

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

We're delighted to announce the completion of a cataloguing project led by Dr. Kit Baston to remap & record our unique and important collection of pamphlets and ephemera by the great Georgian Edinburgh eccentric William Mitchel, the "Tincklarian Doctor." www.wssociety-heritage.co.uk/tincklariand...

wssociety-heritage.co.uk

The Tincklarian Doctor’s Pamphlets: The William Mitchel Collection at the Signet Library – The WS Society Heritage Portal

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

The entrance hall of the Signet Library from a 1925 Country Life photograph newly donated to the Library. The decoration scheme was put in by architect Robert Rowan Anderson in 1908 - in colour in Patrick Adam's 1920 painting on the right - which would endure into the 1960s.

An entrance hall showing a central staircase, ionic pillars and to the right a tall clock.

A painting in earth tones of a staircase leading up to a wall holding a portrait of a standing man. Three men in legal gowns stand on the staircase framed by ionic columns.

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

A real treat this week, a one-off photographic exhibition at @signetlibrary.bsky.social by @lixmount.bsky.social for @rpshistgroup.bsky.social This selection of our photographic collection featured our Hill & Adamson Album, negatives of Penicuik House, albums from the Roughead Collection plus..

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

This super Directory and Voter’s Guide to Edinburgh and Leith compiled by William Sinclair in 1893 features a beautiful interpretation of the Arms of Leith, although the real treats are the advertisements! @signetlibrary.bsky.social

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Signet Library followers will be familiar with the work of our conservator, @johockey.bsky.social , who has created a new website bringing together both her Signet Library research and conservation work - it's at johockey.substack.com

johockey.substack.com

Up to 11 | Substack

(Keeping a record of research and conservation work at the Signet Library since 2019 - an online CV). Click to read Up to 11, a Substack publication. Launched 4 days ago.

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

An hour away from Jen and Ben's Mixed Doubles Curling Bronze Medal match - we've a new online exhibition on the literature of Scotland's Ain Game - see our new blogpost about it at www.wssociety-heritage.co.uk/2026/02/10/s...

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Still many more stories to be told, and thankyou to @lixmount.bsky.social for putting this all together and presenting it so beautifully!

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Kit Baston @kgbaston.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

New on the blog: 'The Curious Case of the Missing Curling Stone' - a Tale from the Session Papers of @signetlibrary.bsky.social: www.kgbaston.co.uk/2026/02/05/t... #TalesFromTheSessionPapers A curling stone has been missing for three years, but now it's been found. Or has it?

llustration from 'The Channel-Stane or Sweepings from the Rinks (Edinburgh: Richard Cameron, 1883)' showing curling stones and a curling broom in a winter landscape with a church in the background on a snow-covered hill. The sun is low in the sky showing that the day's play has ended. The title, 'The Roaring Game' is written in a fancy script

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

We recently finished the research phase of our project on the archive of John Watson's Institution funded by the @oldedinburghclub.bsky.social Jean Guild awards. Dive in here: www.wssociety-heritage.co.uk/2026/02/02/t... Research by @kgbaston.bsky.social and @johockey.bsky.social

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Dr. Baston's paper on the Bibliotheca Polonica was one of the highlights of 2025 at the Signet Library as part of our early-year lecture series.

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

The BBC's "Who Do You Think You Are" Magazine new November 2025 issue's "Gem from the Archive" features the Signet Library's @oldedinburghclub.bsky.social funded project on the records of John Watson's Institution, research undertaken by @kgbaston.bsky.social @johockey.bsky.social

The front cover of November 2025's Who Do You Think You Are magazine showing two children leaning against a tree.

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Before and after of this cracker from the Trials Collection at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

And yesterday, this account of the trial of those involved in the Battle of Bonnymuir, during the Radical War of 1820. Part of the spine was detached, so a very satisfying fix! Part of the Trials Collection at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social www.maggiecraig.co.uk/2020/04/05/t...

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

A small display of decorative books, maps, manuscripts and photographs for an academic society visiting the Signet Library this afternoon.

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Signet Library graffiti left by craftspeople from the 1850s into the Great War period behind the cases in the Upper Hall. The names and signatures of painters, glaziers and related trades in paint and pencil on the unpainted timber surface.

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Today's bookpost: the final three volumes of Sir John Baker's magisterial Seldon Society edition of the notebooks of the great English lawyer Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), shown beside a selection of Coke's works from Signet Library collections.

The three blue hardback volumes of Coke's notebooks with the Signet Library's Upper West Library visible beyond.

Coke's 1612 "Book of Entries" alongside three volumes of his Institutes of the Laws of England with engraved portraits of Coke.

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

A spotlight on this book on ‘Auld Ayr and some of its Characters’ by the prolific artist Robert Bryden in 1897. Bryden was granted the title of Royal Engraver in 1899. The engravings are such expressive portraits. From the Burghs and Shires Collection at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

A progress report on our John Watson's Institution archive project, funded by the fantastic Old Edinburgh Club Jean Guild grants scheme. We are on the hunt for a portrait - can you help?

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

Alexander Mill, "Prince of Indexers", assistant librarian at the Signet Library for over sixty years (1873-1935), with his grandson c. 1930. The last here to remember David Laing, Mill's index to Scottish Court of Session Papers is still in constant use, the only one of its kind.

An elderly man sits on a stone wall cradling a young child.

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

This copy of the Scottish Licensing Act of 1903 at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social today, with some very on topic advertising.

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Our upgrade is complete (and we have also resolved issues accessing our catalogue via the new Firefox v.140 and this is now back to normal).

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

A quick heads-up that our online catalogue will be offline for an upgrade on Wednesday morning (9th July) - all being well, we'll be back by lunchtime.

A screenshot of the front page of the Signet Library's online catalogue.

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

A quick heads-up that our online catalogue will be offline for an upgrade on Wednesday morning (9th July) - all being well, we'll be back by lunchtime.

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

To commemorate the 297th birthday of the great Scottish architect Robert Adam, his drawings - amongst his last - for a new Signet Library in Royal Mile premises for the College of Justice in Edinburgh.

The domed and arcaded frontage of Robert Adam's proposed College of Justice, incorporating a new Signet Library.

Diagram of the floorplan and wall elevations of Robert Adam's Signet Library

Elevation of part of Robert Adam's design for new premises for the Signet Library and Advocates Library within the College of Justice, with a rusticated lower level.

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

This book of instruction for newly qualified legal clerks in 1727, discovered yesterday by @lixmount.bsky.social at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social has several detailed pages on how to ‘write well’. Anyone who has toiled over a page of Secretary Hand might find it of interest..

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Congratulations to all involved in the superb new Aberdeen Student Law Review, especially to our former WS Summer Scholars Christiana Cameron, Valentina Menendez Ron and Matthew Paton. Lady Dorrian writes that it “demonstrates the strength of legal scholarship and analysis at the University”

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

This may be the only surviving copy of this 1770s proposal for woollen manufacture in Dundee: we can't trace more, and given that this predates jute in Dundee, we wonder if a digital facsimile might be of interest to e.g. the Verdant Works, the universities and city library, the McManus Gallery etc?

Title page of 1777 pamphlet reading A scheme for establishing and carrying on the woollen manufacture in Dundee. Printed by T. Colvill 1777.

Internal pages of a 1777 pamphlet about woollen manufacture in Dundee. The pages are decorated by printer's borders and indented capitals.

The final page of a pamphlet encouraging the establishment of woollen manufacture in Dundee, which ends in saying that printed copies were to be handed out for free and subscriptions to be taken at the shops of James More and Robert Nicoll, booksellers in Dundee. Dated April 28th 1777.

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

Examining application forms of 1836 for entry to the John Watson Institution as part of @kgbaston.bsky.social’s project to document and research the archive of the School held by the @signetlibrary.bsky.social This form has a letter still attached by a sealing wafer.

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

The return of our historic c. 1820 Regency sofas after restoration and reupholstering. They were originally made by the Chippendale of Scotland, William Trotter, at his manufactury on Canal Street. Photographs by @johockey.bsky.social

Two men carry a sofa upholstered in dark leather up a grand staircase.

Two sofas in a pilastered apartment with a large round table on the carpet between them. Portraits line the walls.

Looking up at a grand staircase under a toplit cupola with a pair of men carrying a large sofa upholstered in dark leather. The walls are panelled and carry pictures.

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

An exhibition of work by photographers Thomas Annan, James Craig Annan and Country Life staff photographer A.E. Henson prior to Professor Godfrey Evans' lecture on Hamilton Palace at the Signet Library last night.

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Thanks to this terrific funding we are already some 149 records into the project and learning more and more about the social networks and milieu of the early John Watson's Institution. Much more to come: watch this space.

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

A display today at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social by @lixmount.bsky.social featuring Slezer’s views of Edinburgh and Dunotter (the ships!), William Stukeley’s illustration of Avebury, and a dining table-sized map of Glasgow (1842)

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

A major addition to the WS Society's Heritage Portfolio site today in the shape of @johockey.bsky.social 's essay "Minding Your Beeswax. Seals and Surveillance: The Post Office in the 19th Century" on an extraordinary episode of native espionage: www.wssociety-heritage.co.uk/seals-and-su...

Text reading "Then we learned the method: which was to take an impression of the seal, then carefully to break it, and afterwards, first slightly heating the surface of the wax, to press the counterfeit stamp precisely as it had been done before, so that there was no alteration of position, nor outward appearance of any kind to show that the seal had been tampered with."

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

An absolute treat this week at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social, A.S. Boyd’s Glasgow Men and Women, 1905, every page filled with delightful depictions of Glasgow people at work and play. This post details his life and prolific works. bearalley.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-s-...

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Back to Leith with this ‘Guide to the Forth, Leith to Stirling’ by the Galloway Saloon Steam Packet Company in 1898, complete with fold out balloon map of the river. Part of the Travel Guide Collection at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

At the @signetlibrary.bsky.social today, this 1903 copy of ‘Glasgow and Lanarkshire Illustrated’, published by the Hamilton Herald, New Brunswick. ‘Come for the advertising, stay for the advertising’

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

Leaves from a pair of short texts on early Scottish music in the hand of the antiquarian Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (1781-1851) in Signet Library collections. Unpublished? but difficult to date. The first page mentions Writer to the Signet and historian William Tytler (1711-1792)

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

We are thrilled to announce that a Signet Library project to conserve and digitize our archive of records of John Watson's Institution has been awarded a Jean Guild grant by the Old Edinburgh Club: www.wssociety-heritage.co.uk/2025/03/20/j...

wssociety-heritage.co.uk

Jean Guild Award Funding for WS Society’s John Watson’s Institution Archive – The WS Society Heritage Portal

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

The Signet Library was founded as part of a sequence of reforms within the Writers to the Signet led by Deputy Keeper to the Signet Thomas Pringle. This proclamation anent intrant writers comes from the foundation year, 1722.

A single sheet proclamation with part of the title obscured by loss but visible in the title are the words "anent the trial and admission of intrant writers". The proclamation is dated second of July 1722 and signed by the Society's clerk Hercules Scott.

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

The last of these - Dr. Anita Gillespie's "An Impartial and Genuine List of the Ladys on the Whig or Jacobite Partie Edinburgh 1745" is based on a manuscript here at the Signet Library: the Scottish Record Society were absolutely superb to work with despite the difficult conditions of Covid etc.

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Today marks the 135th anniversary of the opening of the Forth Bridge. Left, from Phillips' 1889 "The Forth Bridge in its various stages of construction.."; right, Wilhelm Westoven's 1890 "The Forth Bridge". More in alt.

A page from a “de luxe” publication in celebration of the new Forth Bridge. An unfinished central stage stands proud of the river. The growth of traffic caused by the opening of the Bridge overwhelmed Edinburgh’s rail network to the extent that a complete rebuilding of Edinburgh Waverley station became necessary, creating the station largely as it is known today.

Four images of building of the Forth Bridge caissons, from the classic contemporary account of the background to and building of the Forth Bridge, which would be reprinted in 1925 to celebrate the centenary of its great author, the artist and engineer Wilhelm Westhoven.

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Jo Hockey @johockey.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Edinburgh Book Fair, Free entry, Friday/Saturday 28/29 March at 19-21 George Street Edinburgh

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

The Douglas Cause of the 1760s was arguably Scotland's greatest legal controversy of the century and which ended in both wild celebrations and riots. This huge volume is a set of the legal papers from the case belonging to Robert McQueen, one of the advocates in the action.. (1)

A huge leatherbound volume from the middle of the eighteenth century and showing its age, with the original binding now in an advanced state of decay.

A print from Signet Library collections of a Raeburn portrait of Robert McQueen (Lord Braxfield)

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James Hamilton @lixmount.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

This apse appears in a set of late 1890s glass plates newly donated to the Signet Library. We're stumped as to the church, but it may be Lothians/Borders, somewhere between Innerleithan and Penicuik. Does anyone recognise it, please?

A church apse with four pointed windows under a roof supported with wooden beam. There are tall iron candlesticks either side of an altar whose cloth carries Scottish thistle emblems.

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The Signet Library @signetlibrary.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

In the early years of the Signet Library's current building, there was a "Map Room" in the lower corridor, which had maps on rollers mounted on the wall. These details from David Wilkie's "The Letter of Introduction" of c.1813 show how this arrangment may have worked -

Part of a map roller mechanism which is attached to a bookcase. The head of the young subject of David Wilkie's painting "The Letter of Introduction" is visible towards the bottom of the image. Two cords hang down from the mechanism - one to extend the map, the other to trigger the mechanism's sprung closure.

A closer detail of a map roller mechanism's sprung rewind function. Visible behind it is a red charter box with a round centre section for a large wax seal, usually the Royal seal in these instances.

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